Artifact Report

Chapter 274: Chase Thanksgiving

Only 1% of humans are born with the pathway.

This 1% of humanity only has the opportunity to open up a channel if they live in a metropolis with a population of over ten million.

Only one out of ten people who, by chance, meets the conditions, opens the passage into the nest, and can come back alive.

If calculated based on this probability, Daisy Monroe's death was an inevitability under the influence of chance.

From the moment she encountered the car accident, Daisy Monroe's fate was pierced by irony; but the most ironic thing was that it was only after her death that her son was able to obtain the life that he would have never been able to obtain even if he had worked hard all his life.

"...I was a step too late. She was already dead. After I finally cut the rope and forced it to retreat from the world, I thought you were dead too. For at least half an hour, you lay motionless on the road, not far from her, staring into her eyes. What were you thinking at that time?"

Chai Si was walking towards the sound step by step.

Sometimes the voice drifted too far away and blurred the edges, and he went in the wrong direction, but Uncle Kai's narration never stopped, and it would always sound again from behind him, making him turn around.

In the darkness, the disintegrated and lost part of his memory, like a fish being summoned, swam back to his side gently and touched Chai Si - he used his hands to hold himself like quicksand, and responded to Uncle Kai in a hoarse voice over and over again.

"I...I didn't think about anything at that time."

He whispered, "If I didn't cry, move, speak, or take another step, the world would stop at that moment. That's what my five-year-old self believed. If the world stopped, Mom would stay there, just as before, nothing would change."

By worldly standards, Daisy Monroe might not have been a very competent mother; she rarely cooked for her children, was always working, and didn't even bother developing their preschool intelligence.

Chai couldn't imagine a better mother than her. It was like this when he was five years old, and it's still like this now.

"After the funeral, your aunt hesitated, unsure whether to leave you with the local welfare system or adopt you and take you to Blackmoor City. She was old and struggling financially, and raising a stranger child from scratch was truly too much of a challenge for her. I hadn't considered adopting you myself at the time. I simply told her that if she took you to Blackmoor City, I might be able to use my connections to find a good family for you, rather than having you stay in the welfare home and wait for the lottery, or be rotated through foster homes."

Perhaps this part of the memory has not returned yet, or perhaps Uncle Kai never told him about it. For Chai Si, this was the first time he heard about the process of his leaving Los Angeles.

"Do you remember? After you arrived in Blackmore City, you first lived with your aunt."

Chai Si stood in the darkness, thinking slowly for a while, and felt another small piece of debris swimming towards him gently from the deep darkness.

The moment he touched it, he saw his aunt's old apartment again - there was an indescribable, heavy smell of old people in the apartment, and the light bulbs always seemed to be unable to breathe and were not bright enough. He sat in front of the TV blankly for a whole day.

Even with such a memory, Chai Si kept it in his arms.

"...When your Aunt Hai heard about it, she felt very sorry. It was Thanksgiving at the time, so she asked me to invite your aunt and bring you to our house for dinner. She prepared a gift for you. Do you remember? It was a small assembled rocket."

Chai Si smiled, then fell again.

"I remember," he responded, "I remember now... Damian and I put it together."

Aunt Hai, who still hadn't lost her child at the time, smiled brightly. She praised Chai Si for his good looks and wide vocabulary, saying he knew so many words at the age of five and could read storybooks on his own.

When Aunt Hai looked at Chai Si, she was a prosperous adult, looking at a strange child in unfortunate circumstances with the eyes of a person who was kind, tolerant, generous... and short-lived.

After all, he is just a strange child, and his life and hers will not be intertwined and influence each other for long.

Her eyes were filled with suspicion, jealousy and fear, but that was all in the future.

...Nest Domination player, Cuckoo's Son, Chase Monroe.

This fragment of memory suddenly came back and made him tremble slightly.

I don't like it, but it's my memory.

"...Damian likes you very much."

Did Uncle Kai’s voice tremble?
As they were pushed away by the dark waves, even if there was a slight distant tremor, Chai Si probably wouldn't be able to hear it.

"He's always wanted a brother. Although you're only a year older than him, you're much calmer. Disasters have the power to push a child toward maturity and an adult toward old age. He insisted on opening your presents and playing with you, and you weren't bothered at all. You let him open the presents and had a lot of fun playing with him."

"How can I refuse?"

Uncle Kai probably couldn't hear him.

Chase whispered to the darkness, "That night, the dinner I ate, the scent of the candles I smelled, the love I received, the gifts I received... and even my life, were all given by his father. I knew then that Damian and I were different. I had no right to refuse him."

"From the first time you two met, you became as close as brothers."

"...I think Damian knows I have no right to refuse him. But he doesn't often use this to force me..."

"Your aunt said that since you left home, you haven't played with children your own age. Your aunt Hai immediately told you to come over and play with Damian anytime you want..."

Luring the wolf into the house.

Many years later, one night, Chai Si stood in a dark corridor, with only a ray of light coming from under the door in front of him. The door was closed, and only the occasional words that were raised from time to time during the quarrel between the two of them could be seen.

"...Tell me the truth! I don't believe it. I'm not stupid... Back then, what exactly did I do... to let a wolf into my house?"

Chai Si slowly bent down, knocking his knees on the floor, half squatting, half kneeling, shrinking in the darkness of a corner of the corridor - oh, no. He is now an adult, and he is trapped in the "Black Abyss".

Uncle Kai's narration was like a rope thrown in, leading him out of the abyss little by little... just like the resident who relied on the rope to enter the human world back then.

When fate moves, it does not care about its sharp edges.

"I had just bought a house, quite far from downtown Blackmore. You and Damian played for a long time, and Hailan suggested that your aunt stay the night and go back the next day. It was that night that you found me in the study."

Chai Si listened quietly, waiting for that memory to be summoned back. ...Oh, by the way, how did Uncle Kai know that narration could help him find the lost fragments?

Even he himself had only recently discovered that he could recall fragments through repeated thinking.

Uncle Kai knew that he was in the Black Abyss and was about to dissipate...

But how did he know?
"You were like a little adult, climbing onto the chair opposite the desk and sitting neatly. I said, it's already half past twelve, aren't you going to sleep?"

“… ‘There’s something I want to understand.’”

Shibashi, along with Shibashi who was five years old at the time, answered together.

"How do I get to the lair?" Five-year-old Chase stared at Kaironan and said, "You must have been there, right? What kind of place is that? How old do I have to be to go there?"

"Who told you about the 'nest'?" Kyronan raised an eyebrow.

Since arriving in Blackmore City, Chase had nothing to do. He sat in his apartment, replaying every word he heard on the night his mother died over and over in his mind.

He refused to think about his mother's fear and roar, he only thought about what the residents said at that time.

He looked up words in the dictionary based on their syllables, asked his aunt questions based on fragments of conversation, and occasionally got inspiration from TV dramas.

"There's a place in the world that most people can't go to, called the 'Nest.' There live many monsters who call themselves 'Residents.' They generally can't come to us, but many humans can go to the Nest because they have access."

He told us all his analysis.

"How do you know I've been there?"

Chase stuttered a bit at this point, but he was confident in his conclusion. "You... Anyway, I know you must have a way. You must have been to the lair, I know it! That monster, most people can't deal with it, but you can."

At some point, Caronan put down the book in his hand and took off his glasses. He leaned forward with his arms on the desk - even though Chase was still young, he knew that this meant that adults were listening to him attentively.

That's how Mom used to listen to him, when she wasn't busy.

"...Is this all your own deduction?" Kailonan seemed to realize his confusion and changed his words: "Is this all your own thinking? Just based on that one night?"

Chai Si nodded.

"And then? What do you want to do?"

"My mother has access, so maybe I do too. I want to go to the lair, find the inhabitant, and kill it to avenge myself."

"How? With a gun?"

This question almost sounds like a test.

Chase's face wrinkled. "No, not with a gun... A human can't kill it, can they?"

Kailonan was slightly surprised again. "Why do you say that?"

"It... I don't know how to put it, but it's different from us. Its knife pierced my body, but I'm still alive... It, it's different."

At that time, Chai Si was unable to clearly express in words the concept that "the nest and its residents are not governed by the laws of the human world."

"If you can't kill it, what are you going to do?" Kaironan asked slowly.

Chai Si was stunned for a few seconds.

"I'll let the other residents kill them," he said after a while. "What do the other monsters want? I'll find them and give them anything. But I can't give it directly. I have to kill the resident who killed my mother before I give it to them."

A five-year-old child naturally has the privilege of childishness. But Kellonan didn't laugh.

He thought he had answered wrongly, poorly.

"Or, or we can trick it into coming back in! Trap it... This isn't its lair, so it's bound to encounter problems it wouldn't encounter there. Just like... this isn't Los Angeles, so I'm facing problems that only Blackmore City would encounter. Same thing, right?"

Kaironan studied him quietly for a moment.

"It's half past twelve. It's too late for a child. Go to bed."

Chai Si felt like he was being shut out.

He was anxious and angry for a moment, and couldn't help but start crying silently; while wiping his tears, he wanted to say something back to Kaironan.

"No, it's a quarter to twelve. The adults should go to bed."

Kailonan was startled, looked at his watch, and smiled softly. "Are you always sensitive to time?"

"No," he replied, "I train while I'm waiting for my mom to get off work."

Chai Si stopped in the darkness.

He had forgotten many details of that night, but there was one detail that he hadn't forgotten; it had sunk deep into his mind, dissipating into the darkness before being brought back to him by Uncle Kai's narration.

"...from such an ordinary background...the child she gave birth to is truly extraordinary."

As he closed the door, he faintly heard Kaironan mutter to himself.

(End of this chapter)